Look if I see a messy toy aisle I can’t help it okay????
Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Multiplex
Sorcery 101
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Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
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Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
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Hijinks Ensue
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So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
Wondermark
Frumph.NET
Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
Wondermark
Frumph.NET
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I HAVE THIS EXACT SAME PROBLEM.
I grab a shopping cart and take it to the cart racks at the front of the store whenever I shop WalMart or Kmart.
Speaking of crowd-sourced labor for free, I googled “facing” and discovered a Wikipedia article on what I’d once been told was “fronting” the shelves. Then I added a comment on the discussion page in an attempt to be helpful.
That’s like three kinds of irony right there.
(I also front/face the cat food cans, and I put shelfwarmer Transformers at the back of the pegs if I notice them blocking a big name character like Bumblebee or Megatron.)
Why bother? People are still going to dig through them and pull everything off the pegs 5 minutes after you walk away.
I used to work in the toy department at Walmart. I had to put away the TransFormers and the Hot Wheels EVERY time I went down those aisles, because someone was always pulling every last one of the toys off the pegs, thinking the really good s*** was hidden at the back. >_<
Whenever I return my cart, I always pick up others on the way. Leaving carts loose in the parking lot is one of my biggest pet peeves.
I’m with Phillip. Not replacing your cart is as antisocial as not flushing. They even provide those nice little return areas RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PARKING LOT. How much more flipping easy could it be?
Something I see all the time is people parking next to the “cart corrals” and then leaving the cart on the opposite side of the parking space next to the corral. Other times a bunch of people leave carts in a single parking space which I’ve come to call “satellite corrals”. But my biggest pet peeve is when someone puts a cart up on one of the little “islands” in a parking lot where they have trees and shrubberies. They’re going to the extra effort of putting it up there even when a cart corral is ten feet away.
Ditto on the islands thing. I used to work at a grocery store, and that annoyed the hell out of me. Sometimes people will act like they’re doing you a favor putting the cart up like that…
Yeah, unfortunately, I still work at one (Walmart cartpusher D:) And it’s not so much that its more work the annoys me when people do this. It’s the fact that it takes so much longer for us to gather up 20 individual carts on islands and in between spaces and push them in then it takes to push in a row from one of the corrals. But then, people get pissed at us for not bringing in carts fast enough. Sometimes, I want to knock people upside the head SOOOOO much.
Gah, I hate my job so much sometimes. Can’t wait for college to end.
Oh man! I do this all the time! If I see something out of place or a stray cart, I go completely OCD and fix it. And I’ve never even worked at a convenient store, I’m a fast food worker!
I feel your pain, man. That was one of my very first jobs right after high school. If it wasn’t for a few cool coworkers, there probably would’ve ended up being a massacre over that very thing. >.<
Argh! I see people who are parked RIGHT NEXT TO a corral walk 20 yards in the opposite direction, so they can leave their empty cart behind a car or in an empty parking space.
I sometimes wish Mike worked at my store when I see people deliberately making a mess of the place.
Dude, ME TOO! Its SO lazy of people to just leave them where ever. I said it once, I’ll say it again…People: They’re the worst…
I was in Key Largo for vacation and found a shopping center where NOBODY knew that shopping cards to nestle with each other. the corral was filled over but none were nested together…
Yes, I always push them all into each other when I get to the corral.
as a man that spent 2 1/2 years working a lot i find that my biggest pet peeve isn’t so much people leaving the carts in the parking lot as much as what they leave IN the parking lot. every day was an adventure. Dirty diapers in the summer and boxes of old shoes, fruit, and printers in the winter.
Mine is not putting products back where you found them after deciding not to buy it. Three day old ground beef entombed behind a box of Cheerios is a mortal sin.
At some grocery chains in the UK shopping trolleys/carts are locked up so you can’t use one unless you put a £1 coin in a slot. Returning them to where they belong releases the coin. Now that the US has widely-distributed $1 coins, that practice might be worth dragging across the pond.
I do this at bookstores. I swear 10-15% of the time I spend browsing a used bookstore is putting stuff back in order.
I’ve done this as well. Especially at comic shops. I just have to put the trades in order of story.
I have a habit of doing that with the Manga. It’s really egregious in that I don’t do it for the company I work for, but one of our biggest rivals instead.
Of course, I then have a tendency to buy more than I can really afford.
I’m guilty of this at libraries. An author’s works should be together, and the books in a series ought to be in order, and why not put those series in order of publication…? Wait, why is that book behind all the other books? Why’s isn’t Joanson before Johnson? Why don’t I just volunteer here and get it over with? Being meticulous is just cumbersome.
I do this with beef jerky. People always cover up the good flavors (green chille, pepper, etc) with crappy ones (teriyaki, “original”) and THINGS. THEY SHOULD BE SET RIGHT. I also do it with trading cards. NONO pokemon and YuGiOh are very different one goes over there asdfghjkl
At our school library you could get a referal for changing series from alphabetical by title to in the right order :C
Teriyaki isn’t terrible and can often be one of the harder ones to find, cause people are hiding them or there isn’t enough in stock. Can’t defend original.
I’ve done this with the cards stuff as well, and have actually spent a chunk of my time organizing games in a gamestop cause I couldn’t find what I was looking for. Wal-mart’s a terrible place to get sucked into to start reorganizing the toys.
NO BAD! Books go in alphabetical order, in a all library systems. If you would like to put them in alphabetical order starting with authors last name, then first name, then title (ignoring the series title),and then by size (largest to smallest) We the pages of the world would be very thankful.
Same here. Also lining them up with the edge of the shelf. (I was trained as a library assistant once. I didn’t get a job out of it, but it stuck with me.)
Me too.
I’m right there with ya. Friends and family comment on it all the time. I could care less about the rest of the store. Keep the toys neat!
I have a similar problem. I work at a Publix, and whenever I’m at another grocery store I have to resist the urge to bag someone else’s groceries.
I’ve been known to do this at the local Winco. Just because the clerks there get pissy with old ladies who aren’t as fast as they want them to be, and because us Safeway boys pride ourselves on customer service.
(It’s not we can take pride in our prices….)
You are so exploitable Ethan!
Ethan lives in a glass house and works at every toy store on the west coast.
Hah, it’s been years since I worked retail, but I still straighten clothing by default if I walk past a mess.
I’ve done this at libraries. I can not allow the books to be out of order.
Don’t know why. Either I have undiagnosed OCD, or I’m secretly the reincarnation of Melvil Dewey.
The second one. Definitely the second one.
Fight the power, Ethan. Fight the power.
I do this too. Quite a lot. Yet at home I’m a slob.
It’s a situational trigger. You may be a slob eating at home, but you’d have better manners eating at a restaurant, right?
I have to say ditto. It even gets to the point when I can’t even stand to see trash on random department store floors, and will pick up the most disgusting things out of reflex. Of course at home I rarely sweep/vacuum my bedroom.
Exactly! I get the urge to face/recover even other people’s sections or stores, purely because I imagine being that customer looking for that ONE ITEM and it’s IN STOCK but can’t be found because, for instance, it’s on the other side of the store because SOMEBODY WAS TOO GODDAMN LAZY TO HAND IT TO A CLERK.
When I change my mind, I either put the damn thing back, or I give it to a cashier.
The really stupid thing is this is clearly a natural trait that developed of its own accord, because if I try to do that at my work – you know, THOROGHLY recover – they tell me not to waste time fixing everything. So of course, everything is always out of whack in our store, because nobody fixes it, and because nobody fixes it, I guess a lot of customers just shrug and stuff crap wherever’s “convenient” (for them). Meanwhile, one of our competitors? The aisles are COMPLETELY RECOVERED, always. Even in the damn jewelry section. It’s like it’s run by OCD robot librarians, it’s so perfectly organized.
I have to say, the idea that books by the same author, in the same series, must be alphabetical is… kind of silly. I mean, I know it has to be in SOME order, but in cases like for instance, the Dexter series, which are not numbered, or Dresden Files where they’ve stopped numbering it on the covers, it can be really frustrating figuring out what the continuity is. :\ I accidentally spoiled myself for a major event in one of the Dexter books by reading the next book’s flap without realizing I was “skipping” one today. Bugged the crap out of me, because 9 times out of 10 I try to avoid spoilers…
By bragging rights, does the company intend on crediting the winner with the design in writing?
I think they just give a certificate for that. I may be wrong on that part.
I don’t as much fix the arrangement of the toys, as much as I pick up packages that fall onto the floor and/or shelf and put them in their proper places.
At least he still believes in justice!
I DO THAT ALL THE TIME. Whenever I’m in a bookstore and I see a series I read and like shelved out of order? I HAVE TO FIX THE ORDER. Even if there are books or volumes missing. It must all be in chronological order.
I used to do that after I quit Wal-Mart. I’d be in a toy store, and unconsciously fixing the toy wall. Took years to stop it.
Done it too… (cleaning up a toy/book display out of habit.) Toy sections are always horrible messes.
Try being in a store that is near a college/university. College students in the toy department all night long, playing with the toys.
Even the PRESCHOOL toys. >_<
I “flush” the cheap CDs at Tuesday Morning and Books-A-Million. *pitiful, guilt-ridden face*
saving a few grand by asking your viewers to VOLUNTARILY submit a logo design is (IMO) neither exploiting the workforce nor hypocrisy
Not to mention that the majority of Huffington Post’s writers don’t get paid to write. Most of the articles are people who are just trying to get their work out there. This isn’t a new business procedure for HP at all.
I encourage people to boycott Huffington Post but I don’t know how much that will actually accomplish.
What bothers me most about the Huffington Post is all the “science” and “medicine” articles they run promoting snake oil. Fad diets, homeopathy, etc.
It really undermines credibility when you’ve got one article talking about the legit science behind climate change next to an article about magical shaky healy water. Ugh.
That’s what you get when you accept articles from anyone and run them.
Yup. Guilty. And I haven’t worked retail in ten years. It’s OCD. I honestly think anyone who is a self proclaimed collector or comic fan has at least minimal OCD tendency. We all remove items from the packaging, put them on meticulously organized shelving units and/or put them in a protective plastic bag forever entombing them in tubs stacked in neat rows…One third of us saves the packaging…An additional one third never even takes them out of it. I bet you can’t find a single “collector” who doesn’t do one of these things…
…Additionally…
I lock my doors/windows two times.
Keys, wallet, TV remote & salt/pepper are always in one location.
Always leave a restaurant table cleaner then I found it.
Return abandoned shopping carts in parking lot when I pass by them.
Grab the 6th soda/pop drink lid and
Won’t touch a bathroom doorknob or sink faucet without a paper towel.
Between my toy runs and the shopping cart thing, I always seem to exercise off that lunch I ate at the restaurant LoL. The last two are just because I have personally witnessed outrageous lack of basic human hygiene. Some people don’t wash there hand after going to the bathroom or sneezing.
Sum ppl B NaZtE! ( o_o)
In my experiences most if not all people have at least one or two “OCD” tendencies. Those who don’t are slobbing hillbillys who would be better off if they did.
I used to be this way with libraries and bookstores.
Now I work in a library. A library that has eschewed the time-honored Dewey Decimal system for something new and stupid and impossible to keep ordered. After a year or so, my new motto to out-of-order books has become: “Eh, screw it.”
…
That said, if/when I leave this job, give me a few months, and I’ll be straightening the Barnes & Nobles shelves.
While I’m not a huge fan of Dewey Decimal, just what shelf system did your library switch to, SUDOC? It doesn’t sound like they went with LC…
Something called BISAC, I think. It’s more “like a bookstore” intended to make our library a “browsing library” that’s more patron-friendly…unless those patrons actually know exactly what they’re looking for, because then heaven help them.
You don’t work in Albany Public Library, do you? They ditched Dewey in favor of a more “bookstore-like” system not long ago. At least, I think they tried to. It makes using the library a hassle, especially considering how I’ve even went to the effort of memorizing certain Dewey numbers (folk tales=398.2)
Anyway, I’m wondering if maybe Ethan just needs a vacation.
Nope, but I think they’re the ones responsible. Our director apparently went to some library up North that has that system, and just thought it was the bees knees.
Of course, our director hardly ever actually enters the library building itself, so as far as she knows, it works perfectly. It’s designed for “browsing” because everyone knows the DDS didn’t, y’know, sort books by subject or anything.
What’s extra-special irritating is just how plain WRONG a lot of the labels are. Marvel’s Avengers Encyclopedia is in “performing art” because…well, because that’s where the Star Wars Encyclopedias go. Cake Wrecks was under cooking because, well, cake! Etc.
It’s a mess. I’d like to thank whoever invented it with a smack on the nose.
My friend and I did this at our local game store when we were in high school. The owner got a lot of free labor out of us.
I still sometimes do this at libraries and bookstores, although being older, I’m usually stop myself since I’m not being paid for it. The compulsion still sneaks up though.
Incidentally, I’ve done the same at Wal-Mart, 7-11, Circle K, and various other gas stations.
The HP should at least offer something nicer than just bragging rights O.o at least in my opinion.
On the other side, when I find comics somebody hid only to forgot where they were, I tend to take them out and give them to the cashiers as they find anoying to have several titles that are supposed to be in stock but nobody is able to find. XD
This happens after doing a job for a while.
One time, when I still worked as a disc inspector for Netflix, I found myself inspecting a DVD my mom rented from a Redbox. It passed inspection.
I do the exact same thing at bookstores in the graphic novel section. Books of adjacent numbers within the same series should at least be next to each other! DX
Wait, I’m not the only one? Sweet!
I sort transformers by character, the shelfwarmers and the ones the store has a ton of go on lower pegs where kids are more likely to reach them. Kids have an age where they’ll be happy with any transformer they can get their hands on, so they may as well move the shelfwarmers out of the way so there is room for better. The best way I know I’m seeing everything they have is if I know every peg has the same stuff throughout.
When I worked in the toy department, one night I went to stock a case of Hot Wheels on our Hot Wheels endcap. Imagine my surprise when I saw that someone had organized the entire thing. The pegs were sorted out by the “classification,” then by card number. I thought it was great; that it would minimize people “digging.” So I took the time to keep everything organized as I stocked it.
Later that night, while I was zoning the department, I found Hot Wheels all over the the floor and the nearby shelves.
But, for a few glorious hours, the Hot Wheels endcap was organized so that someone that knew what they wanted could just reach up and grab it.
Yep, Amber is definitely losing weight. Can’t decide if this makes her hotter or not. Though I remember back in book 2, when Willis bragged about displaying her gut.
Uhg! My mom cleans up toy isles it bugs me… what what bugs me more is when I find MYSELF doing it!
Librarian, also guilty.
Then again, I broke up with HuffPo AGES ago because of how they keep publishing Anti-vax stuff. Month or two ago they published an article that was all “OH NOES! BABIES ARE DYING BECAUSE OF THE ANTI-VAX MOVEMENT! IS IT BAD YOU GUYS? WE DON’T KNOW! HERE’S WHAT SOME DOCTORS SAID” and I flipped the fuck out because of course, there was no mention of how they gave legitimacy to the anti-vax movement over and over again and NOW suddenly they’re worried that it might be a problem? Flames, flames on the sides of my face. . .
But yeah, this contest is also bullshit. I just don’t expect any better from them at this point.
Nice CLUE reference.
Yep, I can’t run through a music store without neatening at least one section’s worth of CDs. Just like the olden days, I don’t even think about it while I’m doing it.
If I go into a library and I see a shelf area with mixed-up call numbers, I start shifting the collection to the appropriate shelf order. It’s not my fault…!
i like to think that ethan is reading this news off of the toy he’s holding.
Oh god. I hope this means I’m not the only person who gets caught facing product at stores I don’t work at.
I used to do it all the time, before I started working for Walmart. With all the big deal they make about not working off the clock, I’ve managed to minimize that behavior, but I still occasionally catch myself straightening things while I’m shopping.
Usually AFTER I’ve done it.
I have that happen to me when I visit other libraries all the time. I see one book that has been mis-shelved and suddenly I am organizing and straightening out entire stacks of books. Old habits die very hard indeed.
Liberalism… always talking about money, they want free healthcare but they do not want to work for free. Investors dont do nothing for free, and they support the economy. People doesnt care about nothing more than money, and everybody is free to spend their money in what they want if they accept equality towards the law (so no one gets any benefits, hiring minorities beause they “need work” is not equality). Having properties and being rich is not against the law, do what the hell you want with what is yours and dont mess with the bussines of your neighbour, thats on what Americans fathers belive, no man can make another do something against his will
If I’m paying taxes for the health care, how the heck is that free?
Maybe if we taxed the rich more and spent it on better public education, you wouldn’t be writing embarrassing non-English like “people doesnt care” and “thats on what Americans fathers belive.”
And some Founding Fathers believed a lot of things you’d be surprised about. They weren’t a monolithic group. Thomas Paine, for example, was in favor of an inheritance tax that would break up the estates of rich men when they die and redistribute it equally across other men as they turned 21. He and Thomas Jefferson believed money staying in the hands of a select few was detrimental to the idea of working democracy.
Starting to look like it is, too…
Maybe if we delegated the tax money that’s being wasted on health care and social security over to public education, we wouldn’t need to raise taxes on people who worked for it and the money would be doing something good.
Yes, the founding fathers were a diverse bunch of people. This is what we should be taking away from this, that they had to make compromises. Even if a couple of people were in support of it, it was overturned because more people disagreed with it and they probably dropped it in favor of adding something else.
A theory on the waste of taxes is that people is more careful of money when they have to work for It. In theory whe people handle their own money they make the best decisions.
I dont agree but I cant disprove It, but It is coherent with the capitalist idea that selfishness works to make a better society.
And in some way the americans fathers were all people of their time, no one of them would support gay marriage for example, Women rights? An african-american president? I cant say Im best, but old times are old
I mean: I cant say we are better
That wasn’t exactly my argument, and it’s a hard one to reason because there are many people who are careful with their money who don’t earn more because of their situation.
When making the argument, you have to go out looking for what wasn’t put in, what the writers of the constitution took out and put it so that it would be accepted by all the colonies, or even what the words meant and the intent behind certain parts. Yes, there were people who wanted to put in parts about other races and women, but they were removed to appeal to others. If they would have been included at all despite the people behind them.
Im a great hypocrite for studing in an academy that I previously hate and in a country I cant understand. But disecting american history and literature I found that there are a lot of skeletons on the closet. I cant argue against teachers when they say how capitalism gave form to the Liberal ideology and this came forge modern democracy. Explotation of the working force however is part of capitalism, its logical conclusión. People accept to be exploited because they need money, everything is money and in the real world you can put a price on someone´s life (the price of food, health, house, etc.). If you want something then you have to earn It, and that doesnt mean deserve it or work for it (a miner is not going to gain as much as steve jobs). Selfishness is what moves the system, is the base of freedom to do wathever you want with the money you earned, no one should force you to pay taxes or force you to share what is your private property
“No one should force you to pay taxes”? Wait a minute.
Exactly how do you expect to protect yourself from invaders, support roads, HAVE property in the first place, or prevent theft, rape, murder and fire, without “taxes”?
Or do you just feel that if people can’t afford to pay tolls on exclusively-privately-owned roads, or to pay for body guards, or fire “protection”, or private tutors, or to have their water hauled by other people, that they should be left to the wolves?
You – yes, YOU – get otherwise free access to police and fire protection (complete with a phone system to conveniently call for help!), paved roads almost all of which are FREE FOR YOUR USE, water mains, even a military to prevent other countries from invading the edges of the territory and a system in place to regulate contracts and also punish those who harm you (including through violation of contracts), and protect your right to live, and be secure in your person and property, and you aren’t completely, utterly lost for a chance at a very basic education just because your parents aren’t wealthy enough to afford a tutor, and also, your meat is less likely to have e. coli in it.
All. Supported. By. TAXES.
Unless you want to give all that up and live in a some postapocalyptic wasteland where only mercenaries and fat cats survive, you can shut the hell up on all this “waaaaah I have to pay my social duuuuuuues” business.
The whole point of civilization, ideally, is to pool a certain amount of resources – not all of it, just some of it – so that everybody has a decent chance at life. JOINTLY. It’s just that nowadays, one of those resources is something called “money”.
This isn’t even just the goddamn social contract we’re talking about; it’s an extension of the very social structure that has kept our species ALIVE for the past few thousand years even when we were almost extinct (there was a population bottleneck at one point, evidence suggests we were back down to a mere 5,000 people at one point before recovering!). Pooling a certain amount of resources for the benefit of the group as a whole, is both instinctive in social species such as ours, and COMMON SENSE, because it damn well works!
Seriously. Stop whining. I pay taxes too – both federal and state – and you know what? I’m fine with that, because it means that if my apartment catches on fire, SOMEBODY WILL COME TO PUT IT OUT WITHOUT EXTORTING ME. It means if I am assaulted or robbed, I can call for help and possibly justice. It means that I don’t have to pay a toll every two feet to drive to work every morning, because that road is FREE, for public use.
People who equate paying a VERY COMPARATIVELY TINY amount of taxes to “stealin’ mah propertah!” don’t seem to understand why taxes exist. This isn’t the feudal era! Those aren’t just going to some greedy king somewhere so he can buy a fancy carriage. They’re going to support the people and infrastructures that support YOU.
And if you disagree, well! Go live by yourself in a forest with no tools and no access to roads, potable water, shelter, etc. and see how well you do without depending on the things your and my taxes pay for…
Well my bad, but your country is based on liberalism and free market, america is based on a biased ideology. Inheritance tax was a way to promote meritocracy, just another way to say every man for himself. Its in your core, walking beside you Im amazed how the dissident forces and ideas come from religion, despising atheist and gay people is anti-liberalism (a complete capitalist system should encourage individualism such as pro choice and freedom from “god”) left (that really doesnt exist in here) sucks their ideology of Keynesian ideas and from some Humanists intelectuals, everything in function of the same goal, preserv a system. Feminism for example is just another manifestation of individualism and selfishness, for example Ayn Rand.
Equating all Feminism to Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy shows a complete ignorance of what Feminism is and has been, and probably a bit of ignorance as to what Objectivism is as well, and most especially Rand’s original vision of it.
For one, a good number of Feminists don’t just believe in “individualism”, they also believe in fighting for OTHER PEOPLE (mostly women and girls), simply because those people are disadvantaged by society; in other words, in altruistic attempts to help others (think: efforts to reduce rape, or reduce poverty with microloans – something that sounds capitalistic, sure, but is NOT Objectivist).
In contrast, in The Fountainhead, Rand literally writes of characters who devote their lives to altruistic social work… AS BAD. As wasting their potential at best, and at worst, of secretly trying to undermine individuality by, say, not really agreeing that people should be assholes to whomever they want. There is literally no character in that entire book who devotes their life to helping other people, who is not portrayed as either a villain or a pathetic waste of space. In the meantime, the main character literally rapes his love interest, and this is portrayed as “romantic” because he is going for what he wants! And sure, you can make the argument that Dominique is just kinky and that thus it was really consensual, and I can buy that… but it still implies that there is something heroic in sexual violence, as if a “real man” TAKES from women, rather than, you know, not being an asshole about it. It’s a gigantic, male-dominated Mary Sue fantasy about an architect who wins the day by basically being yes, brilliant but also an antisocial ASS to everyone he meets and being goddamned lucky that like, two people in the world didn’t hate him for it. And I say this as someone who initially loved it when she first read it! It’s still creepy and unsettling the more you actually deconstruct what the story SAYS.
Don’t get me wrong, she could spin a story that was enthralling enough… but her philosophy does NOT WORK in a social species, it only works if everybody is a damned sociopath. Because she literally indicated, in her work, that anything at all that is altruistic, is bad, anything at all that involves somebody fighting for or working for someone not themselves, even if it is voluntary, is automatically bad and leads to unhappiness and charity sucks basically.
Yeah, not many Feminists would agree with Objectivism.
Not saying it doesn’t share some select viewpoints – Objectivists would hypothetically be pro-choice obviously, so a lot of Feminists would agree on that (though not all- Feminists are a diverse bunch and it’s not impossible to be somewhat anti-abortion and still a Feminist) – but they ARE NOT interchangeable. It is NOT “just another manifestation” of Rand’s idealistic, narcissistic vision of “selfishness”.
Likewise, I’m not sure you understand what “Humanism” is either… Humanists by default believe in “human potential” and being all in this together. This holds whether the humanist in question was a Christian or a secular humanist; Christian ones believed that it was only right to aide others and that God gave us magnificient minds that should be properly used, while secular ones have tended to believe that kindness is a good thing and also not derived from religion but from human nature (which, it turns out, is pretty psychologically accurate on the whole).
It also may do you well to know that Ayn Rand was a HUGE hypocrite. She believed that truly awesome people like herself should NEVER be judged for having affairs… then got pissed that her lover cheated on her. She claimed that musical taste was “subjective”… then refused any further contact with people whose musical taste turned out to differ from hers. Yes, really. And guess what? Because of all this hypocrisy, she basically ended up driving away a hell of a lot of people from her life – over really trivial things, sometimes. She caused herself a LOT of issues trying to publicly hold to her “Objective” views that in private she frequently violated with gusto.
Ayn Rand is, suffice it to say, not the best person to model your society on. Or your life on. Or anything other than a Greek-style tragedy on.
You need to study a bit more ABOUT philosophies and ideologies, before you next start spouting off about them. Because you don’t seem to understand what almost any of them are, or mean, or how they’re different from each other, or even in some cases that there is, in fact, more than one version of them.
How did a comic on OCD lead to a rant against libruls?
Its is basic trigonometry in action. Any line of reasoning drawn out in a discussion forum will invariably produce at least one tangent.
That sounds like it should be made into a law people can quote the same way Sturgeon’s Law and Godwin’s Law have become quotable.
OOOOOO …. Does that mean we can call it ……
N0083rP00F’s Law – Any line of reasoning drawn out in a discussion forum will invariably produce at least one tangent.
No true Conservative American puts an unnecessary “u” in “neighbor.”
Nice try, Straw Man, but you made one too many intentional errors.
The fact that liberalism and conservativism are confused among americans is something I cant understand, is just bat shit crazy.
I dunno, is Gerardo’s deal a “English as a second language” thing or a “literally too dumb to write coherent English” thing? If the first, he shouldn’t be starting combative arguments in a language he hasn’t mastered, it’s just begging for trouble. In the latter case… yeah.
As for his “argument”, what did ANY of that have to do with holding a “contest” where the prize is nothing and the entry is legitimate work that marketing/design firms would normally be paid big bucks for? The only benefit to entering is that if you win, you could add it to your portfolio which you could hopefully translate into paying work. Still doesn’t excuse the fact that Huff Po are d-bags for not paying the winning entrant.
I pased my exam and write my reports with a dictionary, office help with my grammar. I can use english in most situations and understand what I read more than many native speakers (or so Im told, maybe the education system doesnt work too well here). But ok, reading and understanding doesnt mean I mastered the lenguage
Errors in that paragraph:
Pased should be “passed; “write my reports with a dictionary” – what reports? What is the context for this sentence? It’s also possible that you should actually be using past tense, having WRITTEN reports with the HELP of a dictionary.
“office help with my grammar”? I assume you mean Microsoft Office, which should be capitalized by the way, but that’s also a terrible way to learn English grammar. Partly because computer programs do not have understanding of a little thing called “nuance”, and partly because MS Office is, in fact, sometimes wrong in its spelling and grammar corrections.
You write “so Im told” – kudos on actually knowing to capitalize the I, but you’re missing the apostrophe that a contraction REQUIRES in English.
Likewise you are missing the apostrophe in “doesn’t” – in BOTH uses.
You should write it as “doesn’t mean I have mastered” as you are speaking of a hypothetical present tense possibility, not a definite past tense situation.
It’s spelled “language”, not “lenguage”. I’m guessing, given the word “lengua” being smashed in there, that a Romance language is your native tongue (I’ve taken some Spanish courses, and in that language at least, “language” is “lengua”, and I would assume due to Latin roots, that other Romance languages would be rather similar). Which explains some of the awkwardness, as English is, despite a lot of cognates, not terribly grammatically similar to a lot of the Romance languages.
Have you ever run across the phrase “she understands, but she doesn’t comprehend”? It’s a Firefly TV series quote, and I think it really, really applies here. See, those are two words with such a very subtle difference in meaning – as a nonnative speaker, it’s not even likely you’d think of them as anything other than synonyms. But they are not. Not really.
You can “understand” something… but to truly COMPREHEND? That takes a lot more.
For instance, I can “understand” basic, polite Japanese and Spanish at times, enough for a nice, pleasant conversation if I’ve been particularly diligent at practicing it… that doesn’t mean I’m ready to fully experience and comprehend “Don Quixote” or “Tale of Genji”, in their original languages. I probably never will be, but I certainly won’t just from a handful of years of formal schooling.
There are nuances you will NEVER learn in school; you only learn them from being immersed in the language, and at times, in the culture. For instance, you seem baffled that people use “liberal” and “conservative” in GASP! A different way than you would! That… that it may not even be GASP! Literal!
Yet if you were raised in American culture, you would understand that those two words, sad as it may be, are merely code words for political leanings, almost personalities, in fact; that self-described “conservatives” fall in with authoritarian moral positions, are often anti-government and anti-tax, pro-gun, anti-sex, usually anti-abortion but pro-”abstinence”, pro-death penalty,and often from heavily religious backgrounds… which sometimes include a certain amount of sexism and racism to them, that they feel that Justice is more important than being nice, and are more likely to have a black and white worldview, are more likely to follow NASCAR and Pro Wrestling than they are opera or figure skating, more likely to live in the south or midwest, more likely to discount global warming, and much more likely to vote Republican by today’s parties; self-described “liberals” are more likely to diverge wildly in opinions, but typically vote Democratic party, are pro-gay, often not anti-abortion, often anti-death penalty, anti-war, anti-sexism, anti-racism, and pro-social services, more likely to believe in Fairness over authoritarian views, more likely to support a strong federal government (so long as it doesn’t try to control people’s sex lives and the like), more likely to want to help out in other countries’ poverty and disaster relief efforts and the like, more likely to persue college education, more likely to live in the Pacific Northwest, certain portions of California, or the Northeast, and in favor of multiculturalism, environmentalist efforts, and the arts.
All that is implied in ONE WORD. It isn’t just a political philosophy- you’ll notice they aren’t consistent with literal meanings of the words for instance – but that is what they will conjure up in the minds of Americans.
Likewise, when someone calls themselves a Feminist, you seemed to assume the word has only one meaning in English, but… it doesn’t. There are a wide variety of groups and individuals who have been called or call themselves Feminist, there are at least three major “waves” or eras to it, and there are proto-Feminist movements such as the Suffragettes (who achieved the vote for women in the US)… there is a whole history you are not aware of, partly I think, because you just weren’t raised in the culture that WE are thinking of in terms of Feminism. You also hilariously equated it with Ayn Rand’s philosophies… I say hilariously, because Ayn Rand is almost universally popular only with “conservatives” as far as philosophy goes, and yet, Feminism is considered a “liberal” position, to the extent that “conservative” extremists have been known to use pejoratives like “Feminazi”.
There is an entire swath, in both philosophy and politics, of what are called “dog whistles”; words that seem to have one meaning on the surface, but have coded meanings to others.
You don’t know enough about the culture to pick up on dog whistles; even a lot of NATIVES don’t. Yet you are accidentally stumbling right into dog-whistle heavy topics, without realizing in some cases what you are actually saying to your audience.
I know it’s tempting to communicate when you first get “good” at a language; lord knows I felt the same way about Spanish and Japanese! But you need more than “good” conversational skills to be able to debate politics and philosophy and ideologies with people from a different language and culture from yours. You need not just an extraordinary level of linguistic fluency, but also a high level of cultural fluency, and you just have yet to exhibit either of those two things, but most especially the latter.
OCD I’m not alone.
I already had issues with reading HP on a regular basis, but this is probably enough of a reason for me to get my news elsewhere.
If artists and designers don’t value their work, no one else will.
Yeah, Screw Huffington Post on a business side of things. I’ve heard from a writer that after they were bought by AOL, one of the sites Arianna Huffington became in charge of was Moviefone, she essentially told all of the writers for that website they wouldn’t be getting paid for the articles they wrote with money, but “publicity”.
I wonder what Ariana Huffington gets paid to host a popular website that steals all its content and pays no one.
Ya know, I’ve done the same thing with the shoes at Bob’s the other day. Even though I work at Kohl’s. It’s like: ‘NO. MY BODY WANTS ME TO FIX THE SHOES HERE. STOP IT, THIS IS NOT MY WORK, GAAAH’
I do the same thing, only at a library that constantly gets the English and French comics mixed up. They’re not that difficult to figure out people! How can anyone not understand that French comics look and feel different from English ones, even when they’re in hardcover? Not to mention the French comics are more consistent in size and layout.
I know it’s minor, but it always drives me up the wall. These librarians should be doing their job properly! That’s what the number on the spine is for!
The French and English comics have different call numbers? Huh, them damn 741′s
Can you people all come to my store? We can’t even get the employees to recover the aisles properly. I have become so weary of constantly picking up after not just customers but also coworkers that I now only recover the stuffed animal aisle, because they are soft and cuddly and make me reconsider any plans of genocide.
But I still clean up aisles at other stores while I’m shopping.
The analogy isn’t quite the same. Yeah, you might see someone rearranging something, but this is more on the side where we’ve been conditioned as a society to keep things clean and they’re not asking you to help.
On the other hand, HP is asking for something for nothing, and it’s not something that can be done accidentally or was already around and needed an outlet. Any designer worth asking this of realizes that the very act of asking for something makes it more valuable than they’re offering.
Toy collecting is a way of life.
Free Facing the toy aisles is a part of that. Working retail at the same time is just conditioning. I’ll do it for stuff I like, because its painful to see people abuse toys that have been pegwarming.
that’s not being taken advantage of, that’s just neurosis
I straighten things out at stores all the time. My roommate will just laugh when I do it. And when for some reason, I don’t do it, she’s calls me out on it
Ethan’s so adorable… : )
Wow, I feel weird for being the only normal one here.
I mean, I return my shopping cart and such — I don’t think it has even occurred to me not to, but it likewise wouldn’t occur to me to return somebody else’s. And all those other things? Why? It’s unpaid work, and makes you look incredibly nerdy. And that’s not even factoring in the chance of staff catching you and deciding you’re doing it wrong/hiding tampered with jars amongst the regular ones/are the unabomber.
There, three strikes against.
I’ve never had an employee give me grief for doing their job for them. Makes their lives easier XD Besides, I’m not thinking about the ‘unpaid work’ aspect, I’m thinking about the fact that 1) the toy aisle always looks like a tornado hit it, and 2) other collectors, parents, and a surprising amount of kids would appreciate not having to shove random piles aside to either get to the toy they may want, or to get through the aisle itself.
And for the record, pointing out that some readers of Shortpacked may look ‘incredibly nerdy’ as a result? Yeah, we’re already kind of used to that without the product organizing/facing.
I’ve never had an employee give me grief for doing their job for them. Makes their lives easier XD Besides, I’m not thinking about the ‘unpaid work’ aspect, I’m thinking about the fact that 1) the toy aisle always looks like a tornado hit it, and 2) other collectors, parents, and a surprising amount of kids would appreciate not having to shove random piles aside to either get to the toy they may want, or to get through the aisle itself.
And for the record, pointing out that some readers of Shortpacked may look ‘incredibly nerdy’ as a result? Yeah, we’re already kind of used to that without the product organizing/facing.
Well, this is an incredibly nerdy comic.
no one is going to get angry with you for putting something where it belongs. The few times I do actually see a customer putting something away, rather than just shoving it on some shelf where it doesn’t belong (or on the floor), I take the time to thank them — as do many of my coworkers.
As for anyone thinking you’re hiding/stashing anything, there’s nowhere in the store you can hide anything, that someone won’t find it. If an employee thinks they saw you hiding something, they’ll just wait until you walk away, then make sure everything is in the right place. (Although, at my store, some of them won’t wait for you to walk away before grabbing the item and putting it away; other don’t give two s***s, and will just ignore that they saw anything.)
I organize files on other people’s computers, yet my own computer is organized by some arcane system that no one but I can understand, and even then, it sometimes takes me a while to remember which directory it’s in, according to whatever I was thinking about at the time I saved it.
First I thought, “Hey, why aren’t they wearing the green t-shirts?” Then I laughed my ass off XDXDXD Ethan, you’re freakin’ hopeless!!
The difference is, organizing a toy aisle or a book shelf is a good deed of helping other consumers like you. All designing a logo for the Post would do is line the pockets of a bunch of idiots who need the White House Press Corp’s official statement on how it should be done to wipe their own ass.
Spec work is bad. This actually goes against the AIGA’s standards for professional business practices. It’s sadly very common.
huza! more ass hats trying to get free work out of graphic artist…
So I take it, Ethan has a mild case of CDO (a compulisve disorder that’s obsessive, because it’s alphabeltically in order)…
I don’t even work in a retail place (never have) and have caught myself doing this. I think it’s just something programmed into people around the time your parents are telling you to pick up your toys.
…
<__>
My wife compulsively busses the table whenever we eat out… I purposefully leave glass rings or stack things wrong just to see how long it takes to bug her enough to clean/fix it.. usually about 2 seconds.
Oh man, this totally reminded me of my friend who used to write freelance for Cinematical, that was a branch of AOL. After the buyout they fired all their freelancers, but offered them the opportunity to continue writing for them as unpaid bloggers… Here’s his story. http://www.ericdsnider.com/snide/leaving-in-a-huff/
I am really bad about this. When I’m at a friend’s house, I sometimes straighten their kitchen up, sort the cabinets, reorganize the fridge, alphabetize their books and fit them on the shelves as best as possible, fold and sort their laundry, sort and shelf magazines, sort video games by company, console, series, and title, and generally straighten the place up. (Although I’ve gotten a lot better about that.) At stores, I will put like products together, rearrange the shelves in as organized a way as possible and switch the little tag things, put the undamaged boxes in front, put the best food in front, put all the cards back in the proper section, use my phone (if I have one with me) to look up the highest-selling products at the checkout lines and move them to the best positions, and so on. I don’t actually do this very much, though. I will also reorganize computers’ file directories, put documents in the proper place, run antivirus scans on them, update software, switch out bad programs with better ones, and so on. (With people’s permission, of course.) I am getting a lot better about this kind of thing, but I still have sudden onslaughts of OCD sometimes.
To be fair, if a freelance artist does a good job in a contest, then he wins anyway… it’s one thing to have a portfolio, it’s another to have your art plastered where people can see it.
So it’s advertising as a reward, which for a freelancer like myself is really how to have to start… charity projects and film fests and stuff…
I do this all the time in libraries when I see series books placed alphabetically rather than in numerical order.